The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1887-12-28
cashier should make mistake and send in |

100000 appear like $500, 900. He only
stole 800, 900 by the operation. Many OF
the men Of fortune made their wealth IN that
way. One Of those men, engaged in such un,
righteous acts, that evening, the evening OF
the very day when he watered the stock, Will
find wharf rat stealing a newspaper from
the basement doorway, and will go out and
catch the urchin by the collar, and twist the
,ollar so tightly the poor fellow cannot say
that it was thirst for knowledge that led him
10 the dishonest act, but grip the collar
tighter and tighter, saying: II have been
looking for you long while; you've stole my
paper four or five times. haven't youi-
YOU miserable wretch" And then the old
Stock gambler, with voice they can hear
three blocks, will cry out: Police, police"
That same man. the evening of the day in
with his family in prayers and thank
God for the prosperity of the day,
then kiss his children good night with
an air which seems to say: u hope you
will all grow up to be as good as your
father Prisons for sins insectile in size,
but palaces for crimes dromedarlan. NO
mercy for sins animalcule in proportion, but
great leniency for mastodon iniquity. A
Door boy slyly takes from the basket OF
market woman a choice pear-saving some
one else from the cholera--and you smother
him in the horrible atmosphere Of Raymond
Street Jail or New York Tombs, while his
cousin, who has been skillful enough to steal
$50, 900 from the city, you will make him =
candidate for the New York Legislature!
There is a great deal Of uneasiness and nes
yousness now among some people IN our
time to have gotten unrighteous fortunes
a great deal of nervousness about dynamite.
tell them that God will put under their nm
righteous fortunes something more explosive
than dynamite, the earthquake of his omnip-
otent indignation. 1t is time that we learn
in America that sin is not excuSable In pro
portion as it declares large dividends and has
outriders in equipage. Many man Is rlaine
to perltion, position ahead and lackey be-
hind. To steal one copy of newspaper is O
gnat; to steal many thousands OF dollars IS q
camel. There is many fruitdealer who would
not consent to steal basket OF peaches from
a neighbor's STALL but who would not scruple
to depress the fruit market; and as long as
can remember we have read every summer
the peach crop Of Maryland is failure, and
by the time the crop comes in the misappre.
hension makes a difference Of millions of dol
lars. A man who would not steal one peach
basket steals So 900 peach baskets. 60 down
in the summer time into the Mercantlle
library, in the reading room, and see the
newspaper reports Of the crops from all parts
of the country, and their phraseology IS very
much the same, and the same men wrote
them, methodically and UNANIMOUSLY carry
ing out the huge lying about the grain crop
from wear to year and for score OF years.
After a while there will be corner" in
the wheat market, and men who had a
contempt for q petty theft wilt bur-
glarize the wheat bin of a nation and
commit larceny upon the American corn
crib. And some of the men will sit Ill
churches and in reformatory institutions try
70 ofc
ism, while in their grain elevators and their
storehouses they are fattening huge camels
which they expect after while to swallow.
Society has to be entirely reconstructed on
this subject We are to find that sin is i'll
excusable in proportion as it is great.
know in our time the tendency is to charge
religious frauds upon good men. They say:
"Oh, what class of frauds you have in the
Church OF God in this day." and when an
elder of q church, h,or deacon,or minister OF
the Gospel or a superintendent of Sabbath
school turns out defaulter, what display
heads there are in many of the newspapers.
Great primer type. Five line plea. "Another
Saint Absconded;" "Clerical Scoundrel-
ism;' Religion at Discount" "Shame
on the Churches while there are q
thousand scoundrels outside to where
there is one inside the church, and
the misbehavior of those who never see
the inside of church is so great it is enough
to tempt man to become Christian to get
out of their company. But in all circles,
religious and irreligious, the tendency is to
excuse sin in proportion as it is mammoth.
Even John Milton in his. Paradise Lost"
while he condemns Satan, gives such grand
description Of him you have hard work to
suppress your admiration. Oh, this strain
ing out Of small sins like gnats and this gulp-
ing down great iniquities like camelS.
This subject does not give the picture OF
one or two persons, but is gallery in which
thousands Of people may see their likenesses.
For instance, all those people who, while they
would not rob their neighbor Of a farthlng,
appropriate the money and the treasure or
the public. A man has house to sell, and
he tells his customer it is worth $50, ,OOO.
Next day the assessor comes around and
the owner says it is worth $4,000. The
government of the United States took
Off the tax from personal income, among
other reasons, because so few people
would tell the truth, and many man with
an income Of hundreds of dollars q day made
statements which seemed to imply he was
about to be handed over to the overseer OF
the Door. Careful to pay their passage from
Liverpool to New York, yet smuggling in
their Saratoga trunk ten silk dresses from
Paris and half dozen watches from Geneva,
Switzerland, telling the custom-house officers
on the wharf,, ''There is nothing in that
trunk but wearing apparel" and putting
five-dollar gold piece in his hand to punctuate
the statement
Described in the text are all those who are
particular never to break the law of gram
mar, and who want all their language an ele-
CANT specimen Of syntax, straining out all
the inaccuracies of speech with fine sieve of
literary criticism, while through their con-
versation go slander and innuendo and pro-
fapity and falSehood larger than whole car
avan of camels, when they might better
fracture every law of the language
and shock intellectual taste, and better let
every verb seek in vain for it's nominative,
and every noun for its government, and
every proposition lose its way in the sentence,
and adjectves and participles and pronouns
get into grand riot worthy of tho Fourth
Ward on election day, than to commit a
moral inaccuracy. Better swallow thou
sand gnatS than one camel.
Such persons are also described in the text
who are very much alarmed about the small
faults of others, and have no alarm. about
their own great tranSgreSsions. There are in
every community and every church watch
dogs, who fee. called upon to keep their eyes
on others and growL They are full Of suspi-
cions They wonder if that man is not dis.
honest; If that man is not unclean; if there is
not something wrong about the other man.
They are always the first to hear of anything
wrong. Vultures are always the first to smell
carfion. They are self app ointed detectives.
lay this down as rule wi thout any exception.
that those people who have the most faults
themselves are most merciless in their watch
ing of others. From scalp Of head to sole Of
foot they are full of jealousies and hypercriti-
cisms. They spend their life in hunting for
muskrats and mud turtles, instead Of hunting
for Rocky Mountain eagles, always for some.
thing mean instead of something grand.
Thav 1only AZ THAR pai0hhnrc3 ,rarfarti
through q microscope and look at their ow.